


A Joyous Shot At How Things Ought To Be

by ladderax (allnuthatchforest)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: BDSM, Cats, Con Artists, Domestic, Dreams, Falling In Love, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Organized Crime, Sex Work, Spanking, Weddings, arthur is eames's gay mr. rochester, cockslut!Eames, doc holliday is a black cat, eames is a brat, vampire themed weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:57:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allnuthatchforest/pseuds/ladderax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames is a con artist posing as Arthur's live-in domestic servant and submissive. Things get complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Joyous Shot At How Things Ought To Be

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by anatsuno, night-reveals, and the ragnarok. Art by yjudaes. Title courtesy of Philip Larkin.

Eames was used to near-misses on cracked and broken roads. Used to being a passenger in places where red lights were more suggestions than commands, and used to--even fond of--the incidental music of gunfire and the pings of bullets off the roof and trunk. 

But as the taxi hydroplaned and skidded around this hairpin curve, all Eames could think was, _I really, really don’t want to die here._

He realized he was gripping the door handle. He shook his fingers out, a bit embarrassed—though who was going to see? The inside of the car was lit only incidentally by the wash of high beams from the occasional passing fellow-traveler, and he was alone except for the driver, Ronald, who interrupted the silence only to remind Eames that the Bible never says it’s a crime to enjoy having sex with your wife. “I’ll pass that on to her,” Eames said buoyantly.

At long last Ronald turned into a driveway. “Life is short,” Ronald confided as Eames slipped him a hundred dollar bill, then, without thinking about percentages at all, tossed in sixty for the tip. “I think you should go home to Harriet and the children as soon as possible. Your career is not nearly as important as seeing your little girl’s first dance recital, you know?”

Eames smiled. “Well, we did just get a Webcam.”

Eames politely refused Ronald’s offer to help with the baggage, and he made his way up the rain-slick pavement. The night vibrated with a soft bass clef of frogs groaning and rain plopping on the driveway, and the house was cupped by forest so thick it was nearly impossible to see any sign of life through branches locked together tight as the teeth of zippers. He rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. _Is there a single working doorbell in the entire world?_ Then he raised his fist to knock. He pounded on the door, again, again.

The door swung open just as he was about to fumble for his cell phone.

“Hey there?” Eames asked the young man who answered.

“You’re Eames. Come in.”

“I didn’t know Arthur had a son,” Eames said casually as he followed the young man, who had not offered to help him, into the kitchen. “Or are you—something else? He didn’t tell me he was gonna have two of us.”

The bloke sat down at the table, glancing at his knees. He had dark deep-set eyes, and a thin, straight, emotionless mouth; all of his features were as minimal and precise as marks on a beaker. 

“I’m afraid I’ve led you astray.” He fixed Eames with a defiant gaze. “The thing is”—he slotted his long fingers together and rubbed his hands back and forth—“actually, I’m Arthur.”

Eames let out an incredulous single-note laugh. “You’re taking the piss. Really?”

Arthur, who looked like he couldn’t be more than twenty-two, looked at Eames from under his thick, well-shaped eyebrows. “It seemed like you’d be a good fit for what I needed, but your profile said that you didn’t want to work for someone under fifty. So I used a picture of my father on the site.”

“You lied to me?”

“That is what it generally means to lead someone astray, yes,” Arthur said crisply. “I fully understand if you don’t want to work for me anymore. But I wanted to give you a chance to meet me in person before you made your decision.”

Eames tried to keep his eyes wide and his mouth like a hooked fish. His genuine shock at this development could easily cause him to drop his defenses, and that wouldn’t do; he’d reeled Arthur in by acting like a naïve lollipop of a man-boy in the first place, all shy questions and monosyllables and gum-smacking enthusiasm.

“Well, um.” He peered into the dim living room. Arthur may have pretended he wasn’t a slender, clean-shaven twenty-something, but it didn’t looked like he had lied about being well off. On the wall hung a cabinet full of long daggers with wavy blades that Eames recognized as Indonesian _kris._ There was a Turkmen carpet on the floor, a dark lacquered screen barricading one corner of the room, and other cabinets both free-standing and wall-mounted (was that really a Limbert sideboard? Oh, hell) whose contents were too small for him to observe without making it fairly obvious that he was casing the joint.

Which, in fact, he was. And Arthur didn’t need to know that.

He could always tell Arthur no dice, call a taxi and go back...somewhere. But the fact was that he had yet to prove his usefulness to some very demanding people. He could start all over from nothing, or he could make do where he already had an in. And who was Eames, after all, to call someone onto the carpet for lying? No one likes a hypocrite.

He looked Arthur straight in the eye. He’d always been good at programming his face like an instant coffee machine--more of this, less of that. The look he dispensed now was curious, docile, slightly dazed, with a pinch of harmless mischief.

“Sure,” Eames said, formulating a half smile. “No problem. I’ll stick around.”

Arthur just nodded, a bit wearily, as though his head weighed a lot.

“I’ll show you around then.”

Eames followed Arthur to the foot of the staircase.

 _If the little creep doesn't off me first,_ he thought, _I'm safe as houses. I'll crack his accounts if I can manage it, and call Georgi to arrange for a pickup for the loot, and from the looks of it I'll be able to pay Magnusson back and then some._

“Wait.” Arthur turned around abruptly. "I can't let you go any further without making sure you're not bringing anything into this house that violates our contract," he said. "I'm going to check your possessions first."

Eames sucked in a deep breath and held it. It was alright if he looked a little scared, but he couldn't be shitting his pants over a routine frisking. He snapped his gum.

Arthur strode over to him and held his open palm right beneath Eames’s chin. “Spit it out.” 

Eames hesitated, gave the gum a single defiant chomp before letting it dangle off his tongue and onto the midpoint of Arthur’s head line. Arthur reached for a napkin, crumpled the gum into it, and threw it away. 

"Hey, what--sorry," Eames mumbled and looked at his dirty trainers against the polished wood floor. Real wood. None of that stick-on lino junk.

Arthur disregarded him and lifted Eames’s suitcase, less maroon than silver from being swaddled in duct tape.

He unzipped it. It was stuffed to the gills, and its pressured contents cascaded out onto the table. Tank tops, jeans, boxer shorts (baggy), mateless socks. A silvery strip of condoms, which Arthur just lifted, giving Eames a derisive look.

A couple of packs of chewing gum, which promptly joined their masticated comrade in the trash can. Some Boots toothpaste.

"You're squeezing from the top. Squeeze from the bottom. Otherwise you won't get it all out." Eames wanted to roll his eyes, but he just nodded.

Arthur patted the bottom of the suitcase, felt the lid as assiduously as a phrenologist checking for skull-lumps. He felt down to the toes of all of Eames's socks. He unrolled each bleach-streaked tank top. He reached into the pocket of each pair of denim shorts, faded and cut off at the knee. He shook out the sole pair of khaki pants Eames had brought with him and scowled. Eames wasn't sure if it was a "how am I going to see your arse in these" scowl or a "did these cost any more than a loaf of white bread" scowl, but he had a feeling the khakis would share the fate of the gum and of Eames's pride.

After Arthur gently shoved all of Eames's particulars back into the suitcase, Eames let  
out the breath he'd been bottling. Arthur remained still for a moment, his hands held symmetrically at his sides, resting on the hips of his fitted black trousers.

He tilted his head and regarded Eames.

"Put your hands on the table," Arthur finally said. It was little louder than a murmur, but it carried. Eames blinked.

"You heard me." There was an aftertaste of hostility in Arthur's tone. And Eames began to panic, remembering what was taped under his left arse cheek.

He grinned his best scintillatingly brainless get-out-of-an-ASBO grin and bounced his weight from foot to foot. "C'mon. You trust me, right?"

"The contract said," Arthur intoned as if talking to a child, "that you wouldn't be able to bring any of the items I prohibited into my house. How did you think I was going to find those? Intuition?"

"Yeah, but the contract also said you were 56, mate!"

No it didn't.

"No it didn't," Arthur agreed with the voice in Eames's head.

Eames sighed and placed his palms flat on the kitchen table. As Arthur circled around to stand behind him, Eames amused himself imagining him pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, asking Eames to touch his toes, holding a ruler up to his spine, calling in his imaginary colleagues to come and look at the depravity and weakness of will that manifested in the shape of his buttocks.

For a good minute Arthur didn't touch. Didn't move. Just stood and scanned him up and down. Eames would’ve sworn he could feel it, could feel the radiation of Arthur's gaze heating and disrupting his molecules.

Eames hung his head down between his arms and clenched his buttocks involuntarily. Arthur touched a hand to Eames's shoulder blade first and squeezed, then repeated with the other side. He ran his hands down Eames's arms and over his chest, and Eames felt a shiver drench his nerves like a freezing shower turned suddenly on full blast.

 _It's just like a massage,_ Eames told himself. 

_The kind of massage you get before entering a maximum-security prison,_ he amended after Arthur reached down between his legs to cup his genitals with a pressure just this side of alligator. After he'd fondled Eames's cock and balls to his satisfaction, Eames's buttocks got their turn; Arthur gripped a handful of each and dug his fingertips in so hard Eames could feel the sting of his short nails even through denim and a pair of boxers. (Unless Arthur suspected Eames of hiding crack rocks in a pair of fake arse cheeks, that stage of the examination wasn't entirely necessary, Eames was sure.)

Then Arthur's accomplice in the ritual inspection arrived.

"What the--" Eames muttered, feeling a warm, organic pressure against the back of his calf. He looked down between his legs and saw the smoking-pipe curve of a sleek black tail. _Jesus, a fucking cat?_

"Keep your eyes on the table," Arthur warned. "Never mind Doc Holliday."

Arthur broke from his fake buttock hunt long enough to grab the animal gently by the flanks and dispatch it to a place behind the kitchen island. Eames heard its plaintive mew. Then Arthur crouched just enough to rest a hand on Eames's inner thigh.

"Spread your legs," he said, emphasizing the direction with the push of his palm.

Eames obeyed with a sigh.

Arthur's mouth was up at his ear before his sigh was fully out. "I don't like your attitude, boy," he said, and another snarl of nervous energy licked up Eames's spine.

"Sorry," Eames mumbled.

These lapses of etiquette were calculated. Even before Eames had set foot in the house, during their email exchanges and phone conversations, Eames had found out that Arthur liked to punish. When Eames cursed, Arthur would threaten to wash his mouth out with soap and water. He'd describe it in detail, too, no doubt with one hand fondling the balls he was fond of describing to Eames as big and hairy. _I'll push you down on your knees,_ he'd said. _Pull your hair, force your head back, and put the bar of soap in your mouth. Make you taste it. Make you keep it in your mouth 'till you drool, boy. And you look up at me with those big blue eyes, and you're so sorry, and you just want me to tell you I forgive you._

 _Mmm, yes, Daddy,_ Eames had said so very earnestly, one hand scribbling out the clues he'd pieced together as to how much Daddy might be good for in offshore bank accounts.

Oh, but Daddy wouldn't be good for anything if Daddy found Eames's special toy. Provided he knew what it was. There was the possibility that he wouldn't.

Arthur patted down Eames's inseam.

"Shoes off," Arthur ordered briskly. He untied the laces of Eames's trainers and allowed Eames to toe them off. “Socks too,” but Arthur pulled those off himself. He was apparently satisfied by shaking out Eames’s shoes and socks, and he placed the shoes under the table neatly with a sock in each. 

And then came the part Eames was dreading.

Arthur ran his hands up the backs of Eames’s calves. It was a light, ticklish touch, and it made Eames’s legs threaten to buckle once Arthur touched the unbearably sensitive spot behind his knees. Eames closed his eyes, though, and pushed down into the table harder, willing himself not to betray the slightest sign of weakness.

It was inevitable that Arthur’s fingers would creep up to the pouch hidden under Eames’s left arse cheek. But when they did, Arthur didn’t say anything. He just patted Eames’s hips down, then withdrew his hands from Eames’s body. Eames waited for him to say something. Anything. Surely he had felt it. But Arthur just stepped back.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” he said simply.

Eames tried to nod away the lump in his throat.

Really, he thought. Some Walter Mitty type gives me the Homeland Security treatment and I’m quaking in my boots. Half an hour in a suburban house and I’m domesticated already?

He thought of doing some sleight of hand now, of hiding the contraption. But Arthur already knew something was out of the ordinary, that the object hiding in the balmy shade of Eames's arse cheek wasn't money or medication or anything like that. The crucial thing was that Arthur didn't know Eames's intentions. And judging by Arthur's home alarm system, his (supposed) military history, and his fascination with weapons, Eames figured that Arthur would probably respect a man-boy who knew how to protect himself. So he decided to go for honesty.   

"You should probably know about this," he said, worming a hand down the back of his pants to angle for the gadget. "It's a keychain gun. Comes from Bolivia or somesuch. My uncle gave it to me when I got a job in the city, said I should have something to protect myself. So, you know...took it with me just in case." 

He quirked a winsome smile at Arthur. Arthur was cranking the handle on a coffee grinder, looking down at the counter.

"You'll give it to me, of course."   Eames nodded. 

"Of course. Only fair."   

"Put it on the table."   

Eames slid the gun into the center of the table. He’d picked it up on the street in Sofia and gotten it for 25 USD, and it looked like a harmless enough toy, but if you twisted a ring at one end and pressed a button on top of the barrels it would fire off a .32 caliber bullet that could kill a person at close enough range.

“There.” Eames raised his hands over his head. “No more secrets, eh?”

“Glad to hear it.” Eames watched Arthur pour rounded spoonfuls of coffee into a cafetiere. “Now, don’t think I’m gonna be making coffee for you all the time. I’m tired tonight and didn’t feel like taking my chances on sub-par coffee. But tomorrow I’ll explain how I want my coffee made, and you’re going to be making it.”

“Yes,” said Eames brightly. “Yes, of course.”

Arthur swept Doc Holliday aside with a gentle foot motion and raised an eyebrow. “Yes what?”

Eames smiled in a way that reminded him, and probably anyone else who’d ever watched basic cable late at night, of the devil-child from _The Omen._ “Yes, Daddy.”

*

The grandfather clock in his new bedroom--Kieninger, walnut case with walnut burl and maple inlays, worth roughly 3000 USD--showed 11:16. Arthur had dropped him and his suitcase off up here with a total of eleven words (Eames had counted). Nothing more than “Your instructions are on the bed. Read everything before tomorrow morning.” And he’d shut the door behind him without so much as a goodnight. _Either he really is a rude tosser, or he’s laying the iron fist thing on a bit thick._

It was like coming to a hotel, he thought, setting his suitcase down on the floor. Except that instead of a list of spa services and overpriced room service items, the maroon binder on his bed contained his orders. The layout of the house, instructions for the washing machine and the oven and various other appliances, his schedule of daily duties. Eames wasn’t getting spa and room service. Eames was the spa and the room service.

He looked at the front page, a bit of amusement skiffing through his aggravation. His list of chores for the next day.

MONDAY, JULY 8th

6:00 AM: WAKE UP--ALARM IS SET.  
6:10 AM: FETCH PAPER FROM OUTSIDE 

_Fetch? Am I a bloody dog?_

6:12 AM: FEED DOC (DOC IS THE CAT. DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS ON PAGE 26)

_Yes, I know what the little hobgoblin is. At least it’s not a dog. Why do I despise every manner of fuzzy footstool, anyway?_

6:14 AM: MAKE BREAKFAST (CHECK COUNTER FOR ANY REQUESTS; IF NONE, EGGS AND SAUSAGE WITH WHEAT TOAST ARE ALWAYS GOOD. COFFEE ALSO A NECESSITY. MORE DETAILS ON P. 27)

 _Eggs and sausage with wheat toast are always good,_ he mumbled to himself in a n obnoxiously high pitched-mocking tone.

6:30 AM: BRING A. BREAKFAST, COFFEE AND PAPER IN BED

_Hope I won’t get my ears boxed for neglecting to include a single daisy in a bud vase._

7:00 AM: VACUUM AND DUST A.’S BEDROOM  
8:00 AM: DO DISHES AND CLEAN KITCHEN  
8:30 AM TOUR OF THE HOUSE  
9:00 AM: SHOPPING  
12:00 PM: VACUUM AND DUST LIVING ROOM  
1:00 PM: MAKE LUNCH--ASK A. WHAT HE WANTS

_Can’t wait to introduce him to my specialty, Mouse with Canned Halved Pear Body, Licorice Whip Tail, and Peppercorns for Eyes._

2:00 PM: DO DISHES  
3:00 PM: MASSAGE (this was crossed out in blue ink)

From 3-7, the list included such brilliantly fun activities as “prepare the bathroom for painting”, “feed Doc” and “make dinner.” 

7:30 PM: TV W/A.

_Oh. How very sweet._

-AFTER 10 PM YOUR TIME IS YOURS.  
-YOU WILL HAVE VARYING AMOUNTS OF FREE TIME. BUT YOU ARE ALWAYS EXPECTED TO BE ON CALL AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE IF A. NEEDS YOU.  
-ANY AND ALL OF THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AT A’S DISCRETION.

Eames flipped through the rest of the schedule for the week. He was surprised to notice the lack of scheduled physical contact; they’d agreed beforehand that blowjobs and massages were part of the package, but “massage” was crossed off of every schedule on where it featured, and nary a mention of a blowjob anywhere. Maybe Arthur just expected one whenever he wanted it, would just order Eames to get down on his rugburned knees, stick his cock down Eames’s throat and cork him like a wine bottle. 

He stripped out of his jeans and undershirt and draped them sloppily over the back of a chair before turning the sheets down and crawling into bed. The mattress was nice, he had to admit; neither too soft nor too firm, like sleeping on a ripe peach. One of those Swedish foam things, no doubt. He clicked the lamp off and lay on his back. Then he heard a faint noise that seemed to be coming from his bedroom door. His first thought was, _what can I use as a screwdriver to crack open the bottom of the suitcase and get at my best defense._ But it was too feeble to be human. A tap, once every three or four seconds. It got more insistent. And then a thin wedge of light spread over the ceiling. _What in God’s name._

_Oh. The furry hobgoblin._

“Get out of my room right this moment, you little--” he said crossly.

The cat did not respect his authority. Eames watched a thin black shape leap onto the bed and wrap itself around the lump that was Eames’s feet under the blanket. “Oh, come on, get off,” he hissed, but he knew enough about cats to know that they’re like finger traps, the harder you pull away, the more they jam their claws into your sorry flesh. The cat hugged Eames’s feet, then slid away, arching into an elegant hinge before pouncing again. Eames sat up and pulled his feet toward him, and bodily encouraged the animal to return to the primordial soup/suburban hallway from whence it came. It worked for a moment. He got up and closed the door, and realized that there was no click.

The door had no latch.

He began to hear the tapping as soon as he stretched out again. It was going to be a long night.

*

_Approximately ten minutes of sleep in all._

The phrase cycled through his mind like a perverse meditation. As he passed Doc Holliday on the stairs, looking sprightly as ever, he thought, _I hate you more than I hate the National Rail and Lipton tea combined._

He wasn’t a big fan of the man he unexpectedly found in the kitchen, either. Arthur was sitting at the table, already dressed for the day. His hair was slicked back, still damp from a shower, and he wore a white cotton shirt, fitted brown trousers, and tan loafers. A fresh, leafy scent wafted off of Arthur’s skin, and Eames cursed the ability of smells to pierce the brain like an ice pick. But no matter. He’d known a lot of very bad men who smelled very good.

Not that Arthur was Very Bad, but...well, Eames wasn’t sure.

“Good morning, Daddy,” Eames said, hoping his words rang as false as they felt.

“I’m going to show you how to make the coffee.” Arthur rose from his seat.

Arthur showed him the coffee grinder (manual) and the canister where he stored his beans. He wanted his coffee ground fresh every morning, he said, finely ground for maximum strength, and he demonstrated how long and how vigorously to turn the handle. “It’s all written down, but I wanted you to see,” he said.

While Arthur was as focused on his coffee-alchemy as a kid with a new chemistry set, Eames took the time to size up the situation. He didn’t know whether to find Arthur intriguing, or irritating as a too-tight pair of briefs. With this none-too-shabby piece of real estate, with his antique furniture and walls of collected artifacts and ornate lamps (at least he hadn’t said _Everything here’s a something_ \--but give him time, perhaps--) and his love of bossing hapless young rentboys around, he reminded Eames of a little kid at his father’s desk, legs too short to reach the floor, slamming a big inkless stamp down on stacks of paper he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

But no, perhaps that wasn’t exactly fair. There was something about Arthur that suggested he’d seen things, experienced things; that he was older than he looked, older perhaps than he actually was. Not that that made him wise--age rarely did that, Eames lamented--but he was clearly someone who’d been working on curing loneliness for a long time, no doubt using all sorts of quack methods, and now it drew Eames’s eye to it like the warped line of an ill-set bone.

"C'mere and pour the coffee," Arthur said. Eames did as he was told.   Arthur had lights in all of his cabinets, and the kitchen had a warm, search-lighty glow despite the dim setting of the main overhead fixture. "The mugs are up here." 

Eames took out two black stoneware mugs (all the ceramicware was black) and poured coffee into them. The pungent steam hit his nostrils, and he breathed deeply, steadying himself. A little grogginess could be helpful for the ruse he was trying to pull. But generally it took a lot of brainpower to act so dumb.   He carried the mugs over to the table and set them down. They sloshed a little, leaving watery brown rings on the pine, and Eames couldn't wait to turn around and see Arthur's expression when that happened.   

"Careful," Arthur practically barked. "If you warp that wood, you're buying me a new table."

  "Sorry, sir," Eames mumbled.   

Arthur was hovering at his shoulder now. "You're just assuming that I take my coffee black?"

  "What? Oh." That wasn't part of the act. Eames really had forgotten that there was such a thing as cream and sugar.   

"This is how the coffee should look." Arthur walked over to the kitchen island, pulled something out of a drawer, and held it in front of Eames's face before slapping it down on the table before him. 

He'd taken a bloody picture of the proper color of his coffee.

"What do I do if I put too much milk in and there's not enough room to add more coffee?"  Arthur scowled and huffed his words into Eames's ear. "Then I guess you're just going to have to drink it yourself so that it doesn't go to waste, hmmm?"   

"Yes, sir."   

"Try it now. The milk is in the refrigerator."   

It was, as expected, a nice refrigerator, stainless-steel, quiet and big enough to comfortably nap in. There was nothing stuck to the front, no niece-and-nephew drawings of crookedly smiling suns, no business cards, no free calendars from various public service departments featuring pictures of horses and firefighters’ helmets full of kittens. Eames felt slightly tempted to bow down before it and ask its permission before opening. But he could feel Arthur’s gaze on his back. No time to joke, not even with himself.

The fridge had a sort of a Wizard of Oz effect, though. While imposing from the outside, on the inside it was very little to write home about. A couple of bags of some long leafy green vegetable. A few pouches of cold cuts. A loaf of bread. A disproportionate number of lemons. And yes, a thick glass bottle of milk. He grabbed it by the neck and brought it over to the table.

“You’re just going to pour it in there like that?” Arthur was not impressed.

“More used to those little plastic cups with the hazelnut and whatnot. Er, Daddy.”

Eames’s first few tries were unsuccessful and resulted in him pouring three cups of second-rate coffee down his gullet. It woke him up. It also woke up his bladder in a cranky and unwelcome sort of way.

“I really have to use the bathroom,” he whispered, watching the milk marble the dark surface of the coffee and really wishing Arthur had granted him the use of a pipette instead.

“You’ll just have to hold it until you’re done,” Arthur said calmly.

The pressure was getting more and more insistent. The sound and sight of liquid streaming from the tiny pitcher wasn’t helping either. _I’m going to wet myself,_ he thought. _And then what’s he going to make me do? Please, please let this cup be to his satisfaction._ Eames examined the photo; unless his vision deceived him, steel wool-scoured by exhaustion as it was (which was entirely possible) the coffee was the same fallow-brown as the cup in the picture. The exact same.

Arthur looked back and forth between the real cup and the image for an agonizingly long time.

“Not quite,” he said at long last, the bastard. “Still too light.”

Eames didn’t mouth off, didn’t question, but he turned to look at Arthur incredulously.

“You agreed you’d do what I asked,” Arthur said. “It’s part of the contract.”

_He’s testing me. Georgi is going to hear it about this one, that’s for sure. Tomas never has to do shit like this._

Eames considered giving up, considered letting piss darken the crotch of his jeans and just daring Arthur to complain about the damage to his hardwood seats. It was kind of funny, he thought; for someone depending so largely on people’s obsessions with objects to make a living, Eames certainly had grown to resent such fixations. As if certain kinds of wood had more innate dignity, had feelings. As if wood didn’t get pissed on all the time in nature anyway.

But instead of letting his bladder do the talking, he fixed Arthur with an unblinking gaze and lifted the mug to his lips.

Then there was no more coffee in the cafetiere, so Eames had to make a new pot. Now he had even more chances to fail--he could misgrind the beans, mispour the water, to say nothing of his hopeless track record with the milk. His bladder was beginning to press against his waistband. If he stood up too straight he felt like he would lose control.

Miraculously, when Eames set the mug (rewashed and everything) down in front of Arthur, Arthur took one look at it, then, without a word, took a sip. Then another sip. Then, before Eames knew it, the mug had been drained.

“This is acceptable,” was all Arthur said after only coffee grounds remained.

“I’m done now,” Eames asked. He didn’t want to sound like he was begging, except that he sort of was. “Can I go to the bathroom now?”

Arthur tapped the tip of his pen against an empty box in his crossword. “Make breakfast first.”

Eames gritted his teeth together. "Sausage and eggs? That right? I did my reading, Daddy sir."

"Actually," Arthur didn't look up from whatever he was scribbling on the page, "I think I'd rather have waffles. There's a waffle iron in the third cabinet, lower level, to the left of the sink. You have to grease it up first with the margarine and let it heat until the red light comes on. The mix is in the pantry."

Eames had no idea how he managed to stay in control of his bladder for as long as it took to mix the batter, pour it into the waffle iron, and allow the waffles to turn golden brown. He was certain that if Arthur so much as dared to pull out a picture of his perfect waffle, the rest of the batter was going down the collar of that pretty starched shirt.

But when Eames set the waffles in front of Arthur, having heeded well the reminder that there also needed to be butter, syrup, and utensils, Arthur just picked up his fork and knife and dug in.

"Aren't you going to make yourself one?" Arthur asked, mouth half full of waffle.

"No. I'm going to the loo," Eames declared and turned on his heel. "You said make breakfast first. You didn't say I had to make it for both of us."

"You're right. I didn't." Arthur laid down his fork. "But we also agreed, didn't we, that you were to obey me. If I say you have to hold it in, then you have to hold it in."

Eames clenched his abdominal muscles tighter and willed himself to ignore the pressure that had gone from nagging to excruciating. "Yes, sir," he bit off, trying to stand as straight as possible. "If you tell me I can't take a piss for another ten hours, then I will hold it in. If you tell me I can never go to the bathroom ever again, then I won't and I will just let my bladder explode into tiny bits. I am here to obey you, sir." Saying all those words winded him.

"You mean that?"

"Yes," Eames huffed.

Arthur took another bite of waffle and ruminated. "Well, I guess you deserve to go take a leak, then."

Eames nodded in approximation of a bow and walked off as slowly as he could manage so as to maintain the last tattered post-party streamers of his dignity.

"Bathroom's on the left," Arthur said.

Doc followed on Eames’s heels. He didn't even care about closing the door. The cat sat at his feet and watched him piss with her sleek black head cocked to one side as if she were listening to him tell the most fascinating story.

*

They’d come to this upscale burger joint on Madison Avenue after a day of Arthur playing paper doll with Eames, sitting on the plush Bloomingdale’s couches as Eames tried on suits and hoodies and jeans and trousers and shoes. Arthur was a gentle despot, giving Eames final power of veto if he absolutely hated anything— _you won’t look your best if you aren’t comfortable,_ Arthur had said. But he also hadn’t been reluctant about grabbing items out of Eames’s hands and hanging them back up with a _you’ve gotta be kidding_ look. The thing was that Eames hadn’t really wanted any of those things. The character Eames—Year Eleven dropout, sometime porn actor, loutish but bubble-hearted—was the one who wanted them. Eames didn’t remember what it was like to want clothes for a reason that didn’t have to do with sex, money, power, or disguise. But wasn’t that true of most people? 

“So, uh, what do you do for a living?” he asked Arthur. _Good a time as any to ask_ , he thought, now that they were on relatively neutral ground.

“Well, I—“ Arthur began. Then their waitress, a soft-spoken, freckle-faced woman named Cassandra, arrived and apologized for her delay in taking their order. Arthur ordered a lamb burger, light on the tzatziki sauce, with a Greek salad instead of fries on the side. Eames just said, "I'll have exactly what he's having."

"So, do you want to watch the next part of ‘I, Claudius’ tonight?" Arthur asked as soon as Cassandra left. "I mean, we don't have to if you don't want to."

 _Still reluctant to discuss his job,_ Eames noted to himself. _Wonder why._

"No, no, that's fine," said Eames. He swirled the straw in his Coke. "I always liked all that Greek stuff. It was one of the only things I liked learning about in school, the Gods and all that. Like Zeus, god of thunder. Fuckin’ brilliant."

Arthur smiled benignly. "And the Romans? Did you like them?"

Eames shrugged. "Could never really be arsed about the Romans. I know togas, Nero fiddling while Rome burned. That's about it. I did watch Caligula with some of my mates when I was thirteen or so. A risky enterprise. My mum didn't like me watching movies with naked birds."

"Naked birds?" Arthur seemed confused.

"Birds meaning ladies." Eames grinned. "Don't know why they're called that. Maybe because some blokes like to watch 'em with binoculars."

Arthur chuckled sincerely. "Sounds like as good an explanation as I could've come up with."

"You got any hobbies?" Eames asked.

Arthur ran a finger through the condensation on his glass of water. "Well, I like bidding for antiques, as you can probably tell by the house. Fishing too, when I get a chance."

"Doesn't that get a bit boring sometimes?" Eames wrinkled his nose. "Just sitting on a dock waiting for fish to show up? You don't start hallucinating your dead relatives or anything?"

"I find it pretty relaxing, actually. And it's all about strategy. You have to show up at the right time, have the line at the right angle, observe the behavior of other animals in the area to see where the fish are most likely to be. I think it's fun.” Arthur’s phone buzzed faintly in his pocket. Hang on, I have to take this call."

Arthur pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Yeah, hi." He paused. "What? Where was she? Oh God." He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll be right back." He practically jumped out of his seat and strode out the door.

Eames could still see him through the big windows in front. He was pacing back and forth, head bowed. He seemed to be doing more listening than talking; when he did talk, it was only a few words at a time. He looked tense, frustrated, worried. The hand that wasn't holding the phone was fisted and pounding against his thigh.

When Arthur came back in, there was no more talk about Romans or fishing. Arthur balled up his straw wrapper and stared at it for long enough to disprove the theory of spontaneous combustion.

"You alright?" Eames finally asked. 

"It's nothing," Arthur said darkly. Then the burgers arrived. Arthur barely reacted. Eames's stomach had been making noises like an obstinate car since 11 o'clock in the morning, but he didn't want to look rude.

After what Eames judged to be five minutes, he gingerly took a bite of the burger. 

“It's really good," he said, rather apologetically. "You should try it." 

"Not really hungry," replied Arthur. "Don't worry about me."

Neither of them mentioned the conversation again. 

*

On Day 4 of his stay with the man he'd taken privately to calling "My Gay Mr. Rochester", Eames got his first whiff of independence.

Arthur had been at the computer all day. Every time Eames passed by him, Arthur had a cigarette between his fingers, dripping ash into a plastic cup. Eames figured he must've gotten rid of all his ashtrays, but he was a little surprised about the cup, surprised Arthur wasn’t using some $50,000 urinal designed by a member of the Bloomsbury Group. 

"You know, it's your responsibility to let me know when we're out of things," Arthur said sourly.

"Sorry, been a bit busy between the lawn mowing and the spackling and the indexing your 6,000-record collection before noon," Eames said. "But I'd be happy to remedy the egg problem as soon as possible. Would you like me to lay you some?"

"What you need to do," said Arthur through gritted teeth, "is get me some fucking eggs."

Eames quickly set about finding a market within walking distance. 

*

_You have three voicemail messages._

The first two were blank.

The third simply said _Call me at the Salonika house._

Eames looked around to make sure he was alone. No one but an elderly man walking a huge shaggy black dog on the opposite pavement. The animal looked to be a beagle crossed with a retriever crossed with something black (Eames had never known much about dogs, preferring to stay as far as possible from anything with genuine instinct).

He seemed safe, and dialed Georgi's Salonika number. But the dog then began straining at its leash, and the man obeyed his two-foot-tall furry master and crossed the street.

Shit.

"Eames. Hello."

"Oh, hello there, Uncle Rob!" Eames shouted at the receiver. "Did you get my package?"

There was obviously some sort of gathering in the background. Throbbing continental techno music and boisterous male voices. Probably Tomas with the cloud of women that followed him everywhere, the sleazebag, and Azzopardi, and Watts and Sokolov. Mid-level entrepreneurs all, engineers of mail-order-bride fraud and pyramid schemes and anything they could get into without stepping on the toes of the Ndranghetas and Mafias and Yakuzas of the world.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Eames,” Georgi’s voice on the other end was muffled by poor reception. “But I have important news for you."

"That's fantastic!" The dog had leapt up on the sidewalk and begun to snuffle at Eames's kneecaps. Eames reached down and gave its head a cursory pat, which it seemed to like enough to coat Eames's hand with nose-slime as a reward.

Georgi sighed. "Magnusson has cast a wide net of inquiry about this Arthur fellow, and as it turns out, he is in possession of things more interesting than offshore bank accounts and antique weapons."

Eames raised an eyebrow as the dog circled him and its keeper just looked on, utterly charmed.

"Oh?"

"In his home, there should be a silver briefcase. I want you to take that briefcase and bring it to us."

"What's in it?"

"Not important."

"But don't you think it's relevant that I know what's in a...fruit basket going to my own grandmother?" Eames wheedled. "You would've told Tomas what was in it, wouldn't you?"

"Eames, Eames, I don't understand why it always has to be a competition." 

Eames snorted.

"But it is a competition. You know that better than anyone. Everything's a limited resource, is it not? Even something vague like loyalty. To say nothing of...caramel popcorn and apples, which are most certainly finite goods. You wouldn't have gone into the business you're in if you didn't believe in zero-sum games."

Finally the dog spotted a squirrel and lost interest in Eames’s trousers. Eames gave the man a wave as the pair jogged off, then turned his full attention to the phone.

"I have a card game in ten minutes," Georgi said dismissively. "I don't have time for this sort of thing. You go and do what you do best and bring us that briefcase, all right?"

“Oh, I’ll just bet you knew about this from the beginning didn’t you? Probably knew he--” Eames knew he couldn’t say anymore at that moment. But he withheld his assent for as long as he could stand, then said "Yes. Yes, Of course." 

*

 _Two weeks in this place,_ Eames thought, winding the vacuum cord around the handle and stowing it in the closet by the top of the stairs. He’d begun to develop an internal clock synced to Arthur-time. It was now telling him it was time to make dinner. 

As usual, Arthur was still poring over papers when it was time for Eames to start preparing dinner. Arthur sat at his desk in the living room, the TV’s volume at a mumble, and he paid no attention as Eames walked down the stairs and right past him in the tight jeans and made-to-be-threadbare T-shirt Arthur had spent _all that time_ picking out for him at Bloomingdale’s. And as much as Eames was annoyed by Arthur, as much as he resented Georgi for sending him out here and playing a trick on him, he really didn’t like being ignored when he was supposed to be captivating someone. 

It was a matter of professional pride. 

 He plopped a can of wet food, the kind with visible fish eyeballs in it, into Doc Holliday’s dishwasher-warmed dish, then pulled out one of the cookbooks. When he’d asked Arthur what he wanted for dinner, Arthur had just wiped a lackadaisical hand across his eyes, shrugged, and said, _Surprise me_. In the past week there had been no diagrams, no whip-cracking, no Arthur breathing down his neck. Arthur checked in on him briefly when he was vacuuming, would stand at the window and glower down at him when he was mowing the lawn, and disappear when Eames noticed him looking. 

_Surprise me._ Well. If Arthur wanted a surprise, he’d get one. 

“Dinner’s ready!” Eames proclaimed. The plate he held in his hand contained a single piece of turkey with dry lentils scattered on top of it. He’d squirted ketchup rings around all the lentils. “Look, I made you the solar system,” he said, setting it down on Arthur’s stack of papers. 

Arthur looked up at him like he’d just announced his marriage to an opossum. Then his expression changed into something darker. 

“This isn’t necessary. I’m not your jailer. Would you like to leave? Just say the word,” he said, glaring at Eames. 

“No. No, I don’t want to leave.” Eames said in as small a voice as he could muster. He slunk up next to Arthur as if about to rub his cheek against Arthur’s shoulder. 

“Why, because you get to live in the fucking lap of luxury here? Of course you don’t want to leave.” Arthur muttered. “I’m sick of you acting like you don’t give a shit, Eames,” he said. “I can’t work with that. If you don’t even want to try, why should I bother wasting my energy disciplining you? When you’re not going to take me seriously to begin with?” 

Eames hung his head. “I’m sorry, sir.” 

“Are you.” Arthur side-eyed him. “You’re not acting very sorry.” 

“Maybe you should make me.”

Arthur gripped Eames by the arm, digging his nails into Eames’s flesh hard, and dragged him into the kitchen. 

“ _Fine._ You want me to make you sorry, boy?” Arthur shoved him hard against the kitchen counter. The edge of the counter bit into Eames’s stomach, and Arthur grabbed a fistful of Eames’s hair to push his face down. “Bend over.” 

Arthur wrenched Eames’s forearms off of the counter, fitted Eames’s hands around the edge. Eames didn’t dare look anywhere but ahead, intimately learning the grain of the wood as he felt Arthur’s hands work open the fly of his jeans. Arthur tugged Eames’s jeans all the way down his legs, then his briefs. The cold air tickled his bare arse. 

With one hand still tight in Eames’s hair, Arthur brought his hand down hard on Eames’s arse. Eames clutched the counter in reflex. He gasped sharply, and the sudden rush of air stung his sensitive front teeth. Arthur struck him again. Harder. Pain at both ends of his body, certainly not bad compared to the kinds of pain he’d experienced (knife through the thigh, fist in the nose, broken glass through the scalp) but it was amplified by concentration; the pain was the only thing in his mind. Not _we have to get out of here or where is that list of numbers or I’m going to gut that fucker._

It was just pain: pain as installation art, in a simple pale-wood frame, beneath a museum-like light, the terminus of every path. It sent chills down his spine, his arms. 

“Are you sorry? You see what happens when you piss me off?” Arthur growled.

“I’m sorry,” Eames breathed out. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you’re sorry enough.” And Arthur switched to whacking him with something wooden. 

A spoon? 

A spatula. 

Arthur pushed Eames’s head flat against the counter and brought the spatula down hard on each of Eames’s arse cheeks. Eames was beginning to lose count. He just knew how raw his arse felt. Arthur paused to stroke the spatula’s head over the welts, and Eames bit down on his lip and cringed. 

But the pain _was doing something_ to Eames. His cock was starting to swell. And the shame of knowing that Arthur could see everything that was happening to Eames’s body--the goosebumps on his pale thighs and his arse quivering with each slap and his cock getting hard--just made Eames more aroused. 

Arthur delivered hard whacks all down Eames’s legs, to the backs of his calves, in between his thighs. And then there was nothing but the feel of Arthur’s thumbs hooking into the rawest spots, and the sensation of Arthur leaning over him, warm breath in his ear. 

“You see what I can do to you? I’m not scared of throwing my weight around a little,” Arthur purred. “That’s gonna hurt for days, boy. You’ll sit down and you’ll be squirming in your chair because it’s just going to hurt”--Arthur underlined the words with another harsh slap—“so”--slap-- “bad.” 

Arthur took a step back. “God, that’s fucking amazing. You should see what your ass looks like right now. A bruised red _mess._ I should take a picture.” Arthur’s voice was thick. “Don’t turn around.” 

Eames could hear Arthur’s breathing getting heavier. Arthur didn’t move from where he was standing, he just kept panting, and it didn’t take long for Eames to figure out what was going on. And Eames knew a few weeks earlier he would have found the whole scenario a turnoff—a kid who gets off on his own unearned power, standing behind him and wanking to the sight of his poor whipped arse. But Eames just couldn’t find the idea of Arthur masturbating, of Arthur masturbating over him, unappealing.

It didn’t take Arthur long to come. Afterward, he didn’t do what Eames expected: didn’t order him to clean himself up and pull his pants back on and make dinner. Instead he spread his fingertips lightly over Eames’s arse.

“You all right?” Arthur asked.

“What do you mean all right?” Eames asked shakily. He hadn’t expected to be this tired. “Everything’s okay but my arse.”

Arthur ran his hand up Eames’s back. “Don’t move, okay? I’ll be right back. You can turn around if you want.”

 Eames turned around while Arthur went to grab some things from the cabinet and the refrigerator. He watched Arthur pour a glass of water and fill a pot and set it to boiling. Arthur handed Eames the glass.

“Drink that. I’m gonna go upstairs and get some ointment. It’ll help the welts heal.” 

Eames swished the water around. Arthur’s footsteps, thudding up the stairs, reverberated in the hollow space that had been made of his head. He was suddenly pissed off. What gave Arthur the right to act like the fucking injured party who’d forgiven Eames out of the grace of his heart? Arthur was the one who’d been impossible to please. God, was there no end to the sorts of righteousness money could buy you. 

There wasn’t much time for navel-gazing. Arthur bounded down the stairs, ointment in hand.

“Turn around for me?” he asked, his gentle tone a far cry from his earlier guttural snarling.

Eames put his hands back on the counter and winced at the antiseptic sting. Arthur put a hand at the small of Eames’s back to steady him as he worked, liberally coating the lattice of welts with the salve. 

“Here, I brought these for you, too.” He handed Eames a pair of boxer shorts, light-blue-and-white striped, taken from Eames’s own room--Eames’s heart pounded every time Arthur went into his room, but it looked like he was safe for now. 

The water was beginning to boil. Arthur shook out an entire box of pasta into it.

“Leftovers never hurt anyone, hmm?” Arthur said with a soft smile.

Eames didn’t want pasta. He wanted Arthur and all of the things Arthur made him think about to just fucking disappear.

“Yeah, you can eat ‘em yourself then,” Eames said coldly, and stomped upstairs without looking back.

*

_One voicemail message._

BEEP.

_Magnusson requests that the delivery be made by August 13th. He and his associates are in urgent need of the contents._

 END OF MESSAGES.

 _Fuckin’ Magnusson,_ Eames thought. He slumped down against the side of the bed but winced the moment his arse touched the ground. Oh, right. He eyed the bottom of his suitcase. _Tosser just likes to make people jump. How can he need something so badly already if he’s only just learned it existed?_

_Unless he’d hasn’t just learned it existed._

The truth was that Eames was more afraid of Magnusson than he was of Georgi. If he disappointed Georgi, Georgi would just call him a stupid, pretty boy, ridicule him in front of all the associates, put him on letter-writing duty again. Magnusson was different. No one really knew why Magnusson, a multimillionaire who used his aviation company as a front to smuggle guns to war-torn countries and organized crime rings the world over, was bothering to do business with Georgi. _No one_ in this case meant Eames. Georgi obviously knew. Tomas probably had an inkling, at least.

 _I’m a grunt,_ Eames thought, wishing he had a cigarette to accompany his lamentations.

_But I’d like to live to grunt another day. So I can’t afford to fuck this up._

He climbed into bed with all his clothes on and fell asleep with the lamplight still blazing in his eyes.

*

The next morning he almost didn’t see Arthur sitting on the couch. Arthur looked like an underexposed photograph--grainy, with darkness spilled all over him like wine. He was smoking a cigarette, and by the smell of the room it was far from his first. Doc was curled up at Arthur’s thigh, and his other hand was scratching beneath her collar.

“Come here for a second,” Arthur said. His words were slurred from more than tiredness. There was an open bottle of wine at his feet. “Sit next to me.”

Eames sat at the opposite end of the couch.

“This isn’t working, Eames.” Arthur took a long drag and exhaled over his shoulder, away from Eames and the cat.

“It’s not?” Dread was pooling in Eames’s belly. How would he answer to Magnusson now?

“You know it isn’t.”

“Why not?” Eames asked. The cat fixed him with iridescent copper eyes.

“Because. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. You’re right. Who the fuck am I to command any sort of respect?” Arthur ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. “At some point I obviously lost touch with how things actually work, because I thought maybe my age wouldn’t matter. But I can’t even project the image of control. I’m just some schlub with too much junk and too much time on his hands.”

Eames had to salvage the situation. In light of last night, the mark was likely to have negative associations with spanking; plus the effect would be diluted by repetition. He could make Arthur a nice breakfast, but that would seem too tame.

 _Usually what your mark wants is a lot simpler than you'd imagine,_ his first mentor had told Eames, over a game of chess at some fellow grifter's temporary kitchen table. _Don't strike at the big wants. Learn what he's wanting at that very moment and how he's wanting it. Those little wants are the atoms of the big want._

(Eames wasn't actually sure how true all that was. But it was a strategy that could lead to concrete action, and in that moment that was good enough for him.) 

He could imagine Rudy hovering at his shoulder, gray-bearded and oily-scalped and wearing the pinky ring that signified an old-school operator. _Look, you clod, his body is a sodding hieroglyph, telling you what it wants._

_Give it to him._

Eames slid off the couch and twisted his body around, gracefully but not too gracefully, so that he was on his knees facing Arthur. He rested his palms on Arthur's knees provisionally and looked up into Arthur's eyes.

"Can I just have one last chance to worship you like you deserve?" Eames pleaded.

"Haven't we been through this before?" Arthur scoffed. He placed his hands in his lap, a barrier.

"I'm a complete beginner at all this," said Eames softly. "Never had a master before. Always been a right brat. I know I need someone strong to break me in, put me in my place. Might take some time, but I'll make it worth your while." His hands glided up Arthur's thighs so that his fingertips were touching Arthur's. "Promise."

Eames fingered Arthur's belt buckle kittenishly. "Can I?"

"You are so fucking manipulative," Arthur whispered. He did nothing to stop Eames from undoing the buckle and sliding it out of Arthur's pants.

"When you were spanking me last night, God, it got me so hot," Eames said. "You were so totally in control of me. I didn't know what to do. Scared me a little, to be honest." And that wasn’t a lie. Even liars, like stopped clocks, had to be right occasionally.

"So what, you're asking me to be more gentle with you?"

"No." Eames pulled Arthur's trousers over his hips. "I want you to show me more of your power.”

Oh, that was corny. 

Arthur hesitated, but he leaned over and stubbed out the cigarette. “And how do you want me to do that?”

“I didn’t think it mattered what I wanted. But if you really want to know,” he paused, lifting one of Arthur’s hands from his lap and placing it on top of his own head. “I want you to use me.”

“I use you all the time. C’mon, shoo.” Arthur pushed Doc off the couch.

“No, Daddy. I want you to fuck my face.”

Eames ground his knees into the carpet and shifted forward close enough to rest his cheek against Arthur’s knee. He tried to use his face to urge Arthur’s legs apart, but Arthur clenched his knees tighter together.

“Come on,” Eames begged. “Own me, Daddy. Own me with your cock.”

Arthur exhaled through pursed lips, a breath-only quasi-word meaning _fuck it, I surrender._ Post-haste, he did the rest of the clothing removal work for Eames, shucking his shoes and pulling off his trousers and briefs but leaving his socks on.

“There. This what you wanted?”

And there, maybe a third of a meter away from his face, was Arthur’s cock. He wasn’t hard right now, but Eames could tell his cock was pretty, pink and cut and thick enough to potentially leave a calling card of pain. _Fuck, I’d sit on that,_ Eames thought with some minor sadness for what would never be.

“It’s beautiful, Daddy,” Eames said with reverence as he wrapped his fingers around it. “Make me taste it?”

With a sigh Arthur stood and lined his hips up with Eames’s mouth. He fed the tip of his cock between Eames’s lips, and Eames’s tongue fluttered teasingly over the head. 

“Gotta get you properly hard so you can drill this whore mouth of mine.” Eames licked the underside of the shaft all the way down to the base of Arthur’s scrotum. “I just want to be a good boy for you.”

Eames moaned theatrically as he suckled the whole of Arthur’s sac. But it wasn’t all theatrics. Eames had always likened the smell of a gorgeous cock to leveling up in a video game; it ripped away the tired old scenery, and it made him feel stronger, better, more full of new tricks. (Sometimes it also gave him more opportunities to get rich.) And Arthur’s cock and balls smelled good enough to send Eames into God Mode. 

He pumped Arthur’s shaft and let his wet lips play, sans tongue, over the head. He felt Arthur’s cock harden, and when Arthur’s breathing started to get a little too heavy, he went back to teasing his balls with lips and fingers. 

“Tell me what you like?” Eames asked. He lapped at the slit where Arthur was starting to dribble precome. His cock was stiff now, jutting out at an obtuse angle.

Arthur didn’t respond in words, but he grabbed both sides of Eames’s head and began to force his lips rapidly up and down Arthur’s swelling shaft. Arthur’s hips followed the same rhythm. He jerked into Eames so hard that Eames would’ve sworn he could feel Arthur’s cock tap the dangly thing at the back of his throat. 

It was big. At first he thought he was going to choke when it pushed down the back of his tongue and pressed insistently against his hard palate, but then came the moment he always reveled in, the moment when his throat relaxed even without his express permission just because it had to. Because fuck, there was a cock in it that wasn't going anywhere and the only option was to soften up and take it all like a good little slut. 

Eames strained to defy the hands that were in his hair, keeping him in place, and looked up at Arthur. All he could see was the underside of Arthur's chin and the cartilage bulge in his long white throat as he threw his head back and groaned, the groan seeming to give him the momentum to slam into Eames's mouth harder and harder still. 

Arthur's balls slapped against Eames's chin and Eames opened his jaw wide enough to lick at the sac again. His jaw was stretched open to the point that the tension was just this side of audible, the pressure just this side of pain, and he was so giddy with the fullness and the taste and Arthur's low curses like a bass line throbbing through him that he dared the universe to lock his jaw in place for good. 

The rhythm rocked him into a deep relaxation. It wasn't so much an erasure of what was happening as it was an acceptance of it: he was gagging, he accepted it; his knees were itchy, he accepted it; he was antsy from being in the same position for time indeterminate, and he just screwed himself into that feeling like a washer onto a bolt and let it hold him. His eyes opened just long enough to catch Arthur looking down at him, but not long enough to know what he might be thinking.

Arthur grabbed the back of Eames's head. He was close. Eames's nose was getting squashed into Arthur's pubic bone as he thrusted, and Eames focused on the scent embedded in the sweaty curls that were tickling his nose.

Eames was fully anticipating having to take thick jets of come straight down his throat. But instead Arthur pulled out and shot his load across Eames's face, from one cheek to the other like a big grotesque smile.

After giving a few last little licks to Arthur's softening cock, cleaning the stickiness off of it, Eames looked up at Arthur and smiled.

"Mmm, fuck. Thank you, Daddy."

Arthur's expression didn't change as he looked at the Pollock he'd made of Eames's face; flushed and breathing heavily, he just sat back down on the couch and reached first for his pants, then his pack of Camel Lights. He slapped the bottom of the pack against his palm absently, then lit one.

Eames licked the come licked it off his lips, then ran his fingers across his cheek and licked the viscous stuff off his fingertips. But maybe, he thought, Arthur might prefer something a bit more subservient.

Closing his eyes, he began to rub Arthur's come into his cheeks. He spread it down his neck, rubbed it into the hollow of his collarbone, sometimes stopping to lick drips off his fingers. Arthur just kept watching him.

He was harboring some foolish hopes that Arthur might notice and acknowledge that Eames was half-hard, turned on as he was from being on his knees and taking it. He wasn't sure whether he could rightly call the images in his mind desires, but he knew they weren't going anywhere anytime soon--these thoughts of Arthur wrapping a hand around Eames's cock and pumping, of Arthur licking his cock, of Arthur fingering him until the teasing pressure against his prostate had him crying out to be fucked.

"Sir, may I--" He wasn't stupid enough to get off of his knees without permission. Not after what he'd just worked so hard to win.

"Go." Arthur nodded.

Something inside Eames deflated. Maybe nothing had been won after all.

He stretched out his tense limbs and looked back at Arthur. He was resting his head on the back of the couch and looking up at the smoke cloud he'd just blown out. His mouth was probably terribly dry.

Eames turned around. "Can I bring you anything after I come back, sir?"

Arthur lifted his head just enough to speak without effort. "Water. Oh, and Eames?"

"Yes?"

Arthur finally straightened his head out to look at Eames. The look he gave Eames got translated in Eames's mental dictionary as "sly, amused fondness".

"Well done."

Eames hoped that the permission for "may I go" wasn't granted on the assumption that Eames was going to the bathroom. Because that wasn't where he was going.

He veered right instead of left, and headed down the dank staircase that led to the basement. And the laundry room. There was a pile of warm whites right by the door, undershirts and socks and underwear; he'd sorted it himself. He grabbed a pair of Arthur's briefs and pressed his nose to the crotch area, let the smell of cock and sweat drag through him like a thick, hot, threaded needle. With his other hand he took hold of his cock. Keeping mindful of the ticking of his watch, he pulled himself toward a hard, shaky orgasm.

He came all over the laundry pile.

That day was the first all week where the temperature didn't hit triple digits, so it was a day for yardwork. And for talking about how it was the first day all week where the temperature didn't hit triple digits.

Eames clipped the hedges, mowed the lawn, and cleaned the pool while Arthur sat on a chaise lounge reading a professional journal. The reading material around the house was extensive and eclectic, but by the depth and breadth of the literature in that discipline Eames gleaned that Arthur's career--or at least his training—had something to do with electrical engineering. So if Arthur was an engineer, and secretive about his work, then it stood to reason that whatever was in that silver box was a device of some sort.

For what, Eames wasn't too sure yet. That, he couldn't parse from what Arthur read. At least not from what he read openly. He read articles about archetypes, depth psychology, pharmacology, architecture, chemistry. It might all very well have been the far-flung interests of a curious mind.

Except for one thing.

It was a strange and awkward moment in a relationship that teemed with the like, so it was easy to stash that one particular sequence of broken sentences over bacon, eggs and coffee in the spam folder of mundane memories. Eames just happened to tell Arthur that he'd had an odd dream the night before. And he had; he'd just dumbed it down a bit, turning the Queen Gertrude-type figure into the woman from Supernanny and the naval battle into a game of strip poker on a raft. But when he asked Arthur if he'd had any interesting dreams lately, Arthur shrugged and said rather too quickly "I don't really remember my dreams. They're really boring." Which was 1) a contradiction and 2) didn't someone once say something about protesting too much?

The next item on Eames's list for the afternoon was varnishing the wood bench on the front porch. He wiped the sweat off his back with a towel and headed inside to get his tools.

"Come back here," said Arthur.

Eames regarded Arthur. He was wearing black swim trunks; his tanned skin glistened and sweat slicked the hair on his legs and arms and chest. His posture--one arm behind his head, one leg planted on the ground, the other up on the chaise--accentuated the long, limber lines of his body, and he looked confident and at ease. All in all, an aesthetically pleasing vision except for the triangle of zinc oxide on his nose. Eames couldn't control his laughter when Arthur looked up at him wearing his best I-am-your-lord-and-master look.

"I'm sorry." Eames covered his mouth with his hand. "It's just--"

"I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to laugh at me." Arthur looked back down at the page he was reading, but Eames could see the trace of a smile on his lips.

"It doesn't say that anywhere in the contract, though," Eames said.

"Common sense?" said Arthur, highlighter squeaking over a line of text.

Eames grinned. "But Daddy. I didn't think you hired me for my common sense.”

"You have a point." Arthur looked back at him and motioned to the empty chaise next to his. "Sit down."

Arthur drew the pause, and his intense expression, out for a worrying length of time, so Eames didn't expect what was coming next.

"Are you wearing sunblock?"

Eames wrinkled his nose. "Am I what?"

Arthur glared. "You heard me."

"I'm not--I have sensitive skin."

"Bullshit." Arthur moved to sit upright. "Lie on your stomach."

Eames lay down on the hot plastic slats. Arthur came over and slung one leg over Eames's side so that he was straddling his waist, and Eames heard the snap of a cap and the squeal of a plastic bottle just before he felt something cold and slippery touch his skin.

Arthur massaged the lotion into Eames's shoulders with firm twisting motions, like opening a jar lid. He slapped sunscreen all the way down Eames's spine, even going so far (though not far enough) as to smooth it briskly under the waistband of Eames's shorts. When Arthur touched the back of Eames's neck, it wasn't just the sudden coldness of the lotion that made the fine hairs there prickle. It was a wicked tease, thought Eames. Riding him like that, pressing his cock and balls right into the small of Eames's back only centimeters away from a hole that fucking hungered to be stretched and filled. Touching him, but such businesslike touches; the massage a boxer gets from his trainer was more sensual.

Arthur clapped his hands together. "Turn over."

Eames lay on his back now, chest to the sun. Arthur straddled him again, and somehow when Eames looked up at him the zinc oxide wasn't quite so funny (it was still funny, though). And maybe it was something in the way he regarded Arthur then, curiously and unflinchingly from under the shade of his forearm, that made the difference in Arthur's touches. Maybe it was simply looking at Eames's face. But Arthur touched more softly, hesitated before making contact with the skin. And when he came to Eames's pecs, he stroked circles around the nipples, keeping well away from the nipples themselves.

And Eames found himself breathing deep, pushing his chest out just a bit. As if asking to be touched there.

And as if in direct response, Arthur stood up, wiped his hands on his own stomach, and asked Eames for a glass of iced tea. Sweetened with three parts stevia to one part cane sugar.

  


*  
Of course the doorbell rang when Eames was vacuuming the living room in his underwear. Of course.

Arthur had driven into town to pick up the mail from the PO box. And the person ringing the doorbell wasn't going away. The intervals between rings got shorter and shorter until finally it was just one continuous Ba-dong-ba-dong-ba-dong-ba-dong-ba-dong.

Eames darted upstairs and put on the clothes nearest at hand, a varnish-streaked white undershirt and denim shorts ripped off at the knee. When he was decent, he ran back downstairs to peer through the window and see who was out there.

It was a woman Arthur's age or younger in a low-cut white shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, with long silver earrings nestled in her wavy shoulder-length dark hair.

"Hello?" she called, as she began to slap on the door with her palm. "I can see you in there. You going to let me in or just stand there and watch me like I'm a chimp trying to use a computer?" 

Eames was under strict instructions not to let anyone in the house without Arthur's permission, but the woman seemed familiar with Arthur and his house, and seemed to have a reason to be pounding urgently at the door, so Eames wondered what could be the harm. He undid the locks and opened the door.

The woman regarded Eames with a tilted head. "Did you tell Arthur I was here?" 

"Are you Arthur's chief of security or something?" he replied. "Apologies for my lapse in judgment. You can demote me to ensign if you'd like." 

She ignored his attempt to lighten the mood. "So you're--"

"I'm the plumber." 

She laughed out a single, humorless, duckish note. "Sounds like it's my lucky day. You know," she said, meandering into the kitchen and sitting down sideways on one of Arthur's Danish Modern chairs, "I've been wondering if my water heater was installed correctly. I measured it, and it's only raised 10 inches above the floor. Is that safe?"

Eames closed his eyes and shook his head. Clearly she knew the answer to that, or shewouldn't be on about "only ten inches". She was a safety-conscious person, probably even a little paranoid. She was obviously trying to prove that he didn't actually know anything about plumbing. 

She smiled cryptically. "I'm just asking for a second opinion." 

"Regulation distance," Eames said, his back turned to her as he scanned the fridge for the orange juice, "is eighteen inches." 

"Impressive. So what's the best way to allow for the movement caused by thermal expansion?" 

Shit, Eames thought. He'd read a Plumbing for Dummies book a couple weeks ago on the off chance that he'd have to meet someone Arthur knew, but that was one of the answers he'd forgotten. Was it _building expansion loops?_

The door creaked open, followed by the sound of shuffling feet.

"Hello?" Arthur called warily.

"The prodigal errand-runner returns," the woman said drily. "I can't believe your plumber didn't even offer me a drink." 

Arthur strode into the kitchen. Eames was still standing in front of the open fridge, tilting the carafe of orange juice up to his lips and gulping it down pulp and all. When Arthur locked eyes with him, he held the carafe out to the woman encouragingly. "Want some?" 

She rolled her eyes. 

"Sylvia, I'm guessing you haven't been introduced to Eames," said Arthur. "Eames, this is Sylvia. She's a coworker of mine. Sylvia, this is Eames. He's an...independent contractor." 

Sylvia snickered.

"Eames, you have my phone number," Arthur said, using the tone of voice you'd expect when your friend's dad has just caught the two of you smoking but isn't sure he has the right to discipline you. 

"Didn't want to bother you in case you were having a nature moment or somesuch." Eames paced over to the window and watched the trees twitch in the feeble afternoon wind. "Enjoying this breeze, maybe." 

"Luckily, I brought lunch," Arthur said, lifting up a plastic bag. "Eames, would you mind getting out some plates and utensils?"

"Yes, sir. I will do so independently and yet according to contract." He winked first at Arthur, then at Sylvia. She frowned and averted her eyes to Arthur and his dill-and-mayonaise-laden quarry. He couldn't quite tell if she was completely charmed by him, or still struggling not to be. Everyone went through the phases differently. 

Eames cut tomatoes and diced buffalo mozzarella while Arthur plated the potato salad and chopped up mangoes. Eames stole a spear of mango off Arthur's plate, nearly getting his fingertip parted from the bone in the process, but it was worth it to suck the juice out of the flesh and get threads of mango stuck between his teeth. Arthur grimaced at the plate and tried to pretend he wasn't watching Eames licking his sticky lips.

"What's this now?" Sylvia asked, reaching for a small red velvet box atop Arthur's pile of mail.

"Oh--oh God." Arthur looked over his shoulder, sounding a bit embarrassed, but he made no real effort to stop her from opening the box. There was silence as she looked down at its contents, followed by a guffaw that made Eames wonder at first if she might need the Heimlich. 

"Arthur, what is this?" she cried between her peals of laughter. Between her fingers she held a pair of white plastic fangs. 

If Arthur blushed, he'd probably have been blushing at that moment. He started chopping again furiously, even though if the basil was cut any finer it could've been used as eyeshadow. 

"Oh Arthur!" Eames laughed. "I had no idea." 

"It's not--" Arthur stammered. "It's--it's an invitation to my cousin's wedding."

Sylvia cleared her throat and read. "Claire and Josh invite you, our cherished friends and family by _blood_ and otherwise, to celebrate love and eternal life with us on Friday, September 20, 2004, at blah blah blah in Blahblahblahville, Long Blahland. 

"Claire is--She's really...into vampires. As I guess is obvious,” Arthur said.

Sylvia unfolded a piece of white paper imprinted with blotchy, dark-red ink that was obviously supposed to look like blood. 

"Oh my, there's more." She began to read again. "'Vampire garb will be required to create an atmosphere hospitable to the living dead.' That shouldn't be a problem for you, Arthur. I bet you've got a velvet-lined cape stashed away somewhere."

Watching Arthur's slightly pained expression, Eames had to stifle a laugh.

"You do have a bit of the old...Dracula hair going on," Eames said, gesturing meaninglessly with his knife. A drop of kiwi juice flew off the blade. 

"Clean that up please?" Arthur asked.

"Isn't high-powered eyesight also a gift of the undead?" Sylvia said. 

"All that blood's got vitamin A in it, innit?" Eames asked. "All red stuff did, I thought." 

"I thought that was just tomatoes and watermelon." Sylvia opened the fangs as wide as they would go until they snapped in half. "Um, Arthur, I really do hope they'll give you a better-made set of fangs, 'cause I just broke these."

Arthur smiled and set the plates down at the table. "OK, lunchtime. Eames, are you, uh, hanging around?" 

Eames wiped his brow to emphasize exertion. "Don't think so. I've got some stuff to look at upstairs." 

As he walked by, he casually dipped his hand into the purse that was hanging on the back of Sylvia's chair. Luckily neither she nor Arthur looked at him once he declared his intent to leave, and so practiced was he at such legerdemain that he was fairly sure he could have snatched up her wallet even if she, Arthur, and the Metropolitan Chief of Police had been following his fingers as if they were the puck in a hockey game. He shoved it into his front pocket and waited to be stopped, but they just poured their drinks and served up their salads. 

Eames waited to look at the wallet until he was in the bathroom (where, he was fairly certain, there were no cameras). The first thing he learned about Sylvia was that her name wasn't necessarily Sylvia. She had two drivers licenses from two different states, one of which bore the name Catherine Rodrigues. She also had four fifty dollar bills, a picture of a woman who looked related to her holding an infant, a few credit cards under several names, and a small pile of business cards. The business cards read:

SYLVIA J. PEREIRA  
Jungian Therapist  
Specializing in Nightmare Treatment

There was no address, just a phone number. Eames slipped one of the cards into his pocket.

So he was right about Arthur's involvement in something related to dreams. Nightmare therapy, though? Since when had that ever been a top-secret occupation? Unless they were conducting illegal experiments--hooking people up to machines, prying open their eyelids and subjecting them to horrifying images like in A Clockwork Orange or whispered-of Soviet mind-control technologies. 

I'll figure you out, Sylvia Josette Cynthia Catherine Rodrigues Herman White Pereira, he thought. And then Arthur will begin to make sense.

Eames left the bathroom, opened the door to his bedroom and paused. He could hear them talking downstairs; their voices were hushed, but if he was still enough he could make out some of the words. Cautiously, he dropped to the floor and lay on his stomach and waited for his ears to adjust to the low volume.

"...just don't trust him, Arthur, I'm sorry," Sylvia was saying. "I know his references were excellent, I know"--at this point her voice became indecipherable..."there's just something about him that doesn't sit right with me."

She's not talking about me, Eames reassured himself.

"I can't explain it. I tested him when I first met him. But if he was good at pretending he was a plumber, who's to say he's not pretending at everything else?" 

Dammit. 

"Sylvia, there's no reason for me not to trust him. He's not this glib all the time, believe me. He's--he's different." Arthur's voice was wavering a bit, but he sounded determined to be right.

"I know you're probably blinded by lust here--hell, you probably think you're in love with him. And I don't blame you--"

"Don't judge me," Arthur warned. It was a tone Eames knew well. "If I had my way you never would've found out. This is my decision. I don't care what it looks like." 

"If this is about the Mal thing--if you're trying to distract yourself--" 

"Aren't you a bit too smart to be playing amateur psychologist like this?" Arthur said.

"Haven't you learned by now that some things really are as simple as they look?" Sylvia shot back, a laugh in her voice. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't make light of this. I talked to Dom last week, things are looking even worse than before."

Arthur was silent for a moment, and although Eames couldn't see him, he could see him--mouth turned down, arms crossed, lips pressed together so tightly they began to turn white. "Of course they are," he said at last.

"Sometimes I can't believe how long it's been," Sylvia said. "I mean, since we left the States, that was...nine years ago. God. And you still..."

"And your tact is still legendary." He set a plate down loudly in frustration. "What am I supposed to say? She was my best friend. Is. Fuck. Can we stop talking about this now?"

"You have to talk about it," she said, in what Eames figured was supposed to be a gentle tone of voice that didn’t quite hit the mark.

"Not with you I don't."

"Then with whom? It's not like I give a fuck about who you're in love with, but I'm the only person who knows. Who isn't Dom." 

"You think Dom knows?" Arthur sounded pained.

"Of course Dom knows. But Dom is the Garry Kasparov of denial." 

"So this is why you came out here." Arthur was fuming at this point. He practically threw his fork down on his plate. And Eames was certain he could hear the subtle changes in Arthur's voice as he drank more beer; he was far from drunk, but he'd had maybe a beer and a half judging by the slight loss of crispness in his consonants. “I have a boyfriend. Did you know that?”

‘What’s his name?”

Arthur sighed. “His name is Ted. And he’s great. It’s kind of a long-distance intercoastal thing right now, but he’s planning on moving out here after he finishes his Ph.D.” 

Was there actually something wistful in Arthur’s voice? Was that who he talked to on the phone for hours when he shut himself up in his office? Eames had, he remembered, seen the name TED pop up on the caller ID of Arthur’s phone. So that was it then. He just wanted some meaningless cocksucking until Long Distance Ph.D. was able to suck his cock meaningfully. 

And worst of all, Eames thought, was the fact that Arthur hadn’t even told him. He’d manipulated Eames into believing that he was lonely and vulnerable and needed one person in the universe who cared about him. And after Eames had just barely learned to swallow his resentment—or at least how to market it; to sell it as fertilizer and not as crap. 

The irony of Eames feeling like the one manipulated was not lost on him. He almost didn’t feel like listening to the conversation anymore, but eavesdropping was something of a reflex.

"That’s wonderful. I’m happy.” Sylvia said. “But I didn’t come here to pester you about your love life. I came out here to talk about a job." Eames heard her rifling through her purse, and he held his breath. But the only sound that followed was that of a dull thud on the table, probably a stack of papers, which Arthur then flipped through. "Don't worry, you can still go to your wedding. I need you for this, though. The client is losing faith that we can even find this guy. I need my bloodhound."

Eames bit his hand to keep from laughing at the mental image of Arthur slobbering and wagging his tail, his nose to the ground.

"Of course we can find this guy. No one ever actually disappears," Arthur said, a bit cockily.

Eames could hear the grin in Sylvia's voice. "That's my Arthur." 

Their conversation ceased as Arthur read through the papers. Eames was getting tired of lying on his stomach, and on top of that he was actually hungry. Hungry enough to eat that mess of glue and plasticine that Arthur was fond of calling "potato salad". 

After he came down the stairs, he stooped next to the door and pretended to pick something up. 

"Um, Sylvia, you dropped your wallet." 

She took the wallet from him with a smile, but he could see a glimmer of suspicion in her eyes. At least when she opened it up she'd find nothing gone. Unless she'd counted her business cards.

"There's food left," Arthur said. He didn't meet Eames's eye. 

So she had planted the germ of doubt in Arthur's mind. Of course. Humans were simple creatures like that, almost as programmable as computers. Not that Eames really knew much about computers, but he knew they were supposed to be rather predictable. 

As Eames regarded them both, he smiled the smile of one who was watching it all go to hell. 

It was one of the loveliest, gentlest smiles in his repertoire.

*

They drove Sylvia back to the train station at dusk. It was only a twenty-minute drive, but a tense silence crept over them and they were mostly silent except for a few comments from Sylvia about the brightly painted houses downtown and the restoration of Bald Eagle populations along the river.

Arthur didn't head straight home afterward. From the station, he pulled into the parking lot of a general store.

"You, um, like ice cream?" 

Eames looked out the window away from Arthur. "I could take it or leave it." 

Without warning Arthur grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked Eames's head around so that he was looking straight in Arthur's eyes. "Where the fuck are your manners, boy?"

Eames let his smile turn wicked. "Gone to find your honesty, I suppose."

"What I choose to tell you is none of your concern." 

"Do you treat your boyfriend like this? Make him cater to your every whim and then shove him around if he doesn't obey you?" 

Arthur grabbed Eames by the collar. "Did I ever tell you I had a boyfriend?”

“I wasn’t listening, but I overheard.” 

Arthur released Eames and slammed the steering wheel. “I thought you respected my fucking privacy. I trusted you at least enough to do that.”

“Privacy?” Eames laughed. “You were talking. Anyone could have heard.” 

“You think I’m stupid enough to believe that? I know you stole her wallet too. She’s right. I shouldn’t trust you.” 

 “I just wanted to look at it. I didn’t take anything. She’ll tell you that.” Eames infused his voice with a slight whine, and a bit of the fear he genuinely felt. “I used to snatch wallets. Just for fun. I ran with a bit of a rough crowd back then, didn’t I tell you? Thought that was what you liked about me.” 

"You are a fucking piece of work." Arthur touched his forehead to the steering wheel. “I’m not in the mood for this shit.” 

"What are you in the mood for then?" 

Arthur fixed him with a cool, menacing glare. "To shut you the fuck up with my dick."

Eames felt his salivary glands kick in on cue.

"But first I'm getting ice cream. And Eames?”

“Yes?” 

“If I ever catch you stealing anything, or touching anything I told you not to touch, you’re gone.” 

Eames couldn’t exhale until Arthur had left. His heart kept slamming like an echo of the car door. 

Arthur came back with a single cone--Eames could never remember which was sugar, which was waffle, and which was cake--of vanilla ice cream.

"Vanilla?" Eames made a face. "How...vanilla."

"It's really good, though. You want some?" It was back in the triple digits again, and the ice cream was already starting to run down the cone and the back of Arthur's hand. 

"Sure." Eames reached for the cone, but Arthur jerked it out of the way.

"No no. Not like that." 

With one hand, Arthur unbuttoned his trousers and pulled down his zipper. He wriggled his cock free of his briefs so that it stood bare, slightly engorged, red and shiny at the tip. Then he lowered the ice cream cone so that it dripped a long line of off-white liquid from the base to the slit. 

"Come get your ice cream, boy." Arthur put his hand on the back of Eames's neck and guided him down to his cock. 

Eames licked the ice cream off with slow, coy licks. He made sure to get a little on his lips so he'd look appropriately sticky and filthy when he turned back up to face Arthur and ask him for more.

Arthur obliged, dripping a little more ice cream on his cock. 

After Eames licked off his second helping, he took Arthur's cock into his mouth whole and sucked hard until it felt like all the air had gone out of his mouth. Arthur gasped, and Eames heard his head hit the headrest. 

"Oh God, yes, work for me," Arthur said, grabbing his hair and forcing his head up and down. "Suck harder. Make me feel it." 

Eames made his mouth a vacuum for Arthur's pleasure. He pulled his lips away briefly, but Arthur reached down, hooked his fingers into Eames's mouth, and molded his lips to wrap around Arthur's hard cock. 

"Your mouth is mine," Arthur murmured, leaning down. "Mine to fuck, and mine to use. It does what I want it to do. Is that clear?"

Eames said "yes" as clearly as he could with a cock all the way down his throat. 

"That's my good boy." Arthur stroked Eames's hair lazily. 

Eames looked up and nodded.

"I'm going to start driving now, and you're going to keep going. Understand?"

Eames nodded again. 

The vibrations and the bouncing of the car sometimes shoved Arthur's dick even further back than Eames thought it could go, jamming it against his hard palate, making him gag. 

It wasn't bad. It was kind of great, in fact. 

Arthur hesitated in getting out of the car when they pulled into the driveway, and he turned to look at Eames with a quizzical expression before he turned away. It looked for a moment as if he wanted to start the car up again. 

"I don’t actually have a boyfriend,” he said finally. 

"Mmm, OK," Eames said, leaning back against his seat and looking at the nothing on the garage door. 

Arthur looked back at him again, and this time he had trouble meeting Arthur's eyes.

"Are you happy here, Eames?" Arthur searched his face for something Eames made sure was carefully encrypted.

Eames knew the perfect interval between thought and response to avoid seeming like you're lying. 

He also knew that sometimes you have to handle the truth as if it's a lie. If all its ancestors were lies, if all its friends are lies, if it wears the dizzying stripes of a lie for protection in the wild, if it's a sleeper agent who doesn't yet know what it is. 

*

At five thirty am, on the morning of August fourteenth, Eames lay in bed stroking a screwdriver.

The things you can get away with when the man you're calling Daddy likes to see you walking around the house in little more than a toolbelt and underpants, thought Eames. He'd just strolled right into his bedroom the night before with the toolbelt on, and Arthur had probably just chalked it up to Eames's adorable ditsy-ness, if in fact his cock was allowing him to chalk anything up at all after the spectacular blowjob Eames had given him that afternoon.

So Eames had the screwdriver he needed to get at his really important tools. The Bulgarian keychain gun had only been the tip of the iceberg. Taped up and hidden inside the plastic wheel fixture on the rolling suitcase were...

Well, he still had some time before Arthur woke. He didn't need to open it quite yet. He might as well wait until Arthur was in no state to observe the security camera feed.

Eames pushed the screwdriver under his pillow and reached into the suitcase for a belt.

The buckle had a secret back you could slide open. He slid it open and let three tiny blue tabs fall into his hand, then closed his hand around them and slid them into the pocket of his robe. No reason to be paranoid, he told himself; Arthur's asleep, probably not checking the security camera feed at all. Arthur had been sleeping in until 6:30 much more frequently. He'd begun to trust Eames to find his way around the kitchen, then to find his way back to Arthur with toast and coffee and some harmless blunder for him to smile at.

And the complications count was still firmly at zero as Eames got breakfast ready, frying up sausage patties and brewing coffee, then adding a little something extra to the orange juice. It was odorless, tasteless, and completely harmless, as long as one isn't counting monetary damages and blows to egos.

Everything was going according to plan.

"Good morning, Daddy," Eames said, pushing Arthur's door open.

Arthur was in bed. But he wasn't on his back, in the position he usually slept in, ready to spring up like a wind-up soldier at the slightest disturbance. At first the only sign that Arthur was even in the bed was the limp arm and pallid hand poking out from beneath the heavy blanket. Eames's heart lurched in his chest. Then, to his enormous relief, the lump that was Arthur stirred, and the covers fell away. And then Eames noticed the trash can against the side of the bed, moved from its usual place by the door.

"Hnnnn hay," Arthur mumbled into the pillow. Eames placed the tray on the dresser and moved cautiously to Arthur's side. It could have been a trap.

But there was no deception to Arthur's shaking and pallor; his face had a gray tinge to it, and his eyes were dull and glassy. Eames touched the back of his hand to Arthur's forehead. He was burning up.

"Go away, I can take care of myself," Arthur said weakly. "I don't want you getting sick."

"Nonsense," Eames murmured. Arthur's hair was sweaty and plastered to his forehead, and propriety dictated that it be stroked gently back. So that was what Eames did.

The next thing Eames did was start breakfast all over again.

It didn't seem quite fair to drug and rob a man who was puking up his guts, Eames reflected. Besides, who knew what the drugs would do to someone who was that sick. 

Until that inevitable day when it's him or you, you bloody twit. Then you do exactly what you have to do.

And the more he allowed himself to indulge in exceptions and tender mercies, the harder it would inevitably be.

He glanced at the pill-and-a-half that he had left, that he hadn't just impulsively poured down the drain. He poured a fresh glass of orange juice, strained it the way Arthur liked, then prepared to do what he had to.

The pills wouldn't leave his hand.

Arthur got a drug-free breakfast of toast, some bananas (Eames made a special trip to the market), juice, and tea. He took only a few bites of the toast before promptly vomiting everything back up again. Between encounters with the bucket, he'd glare at Eames with his droopy, shiny eyes, wordlessly telling him _Get out of here and let me puke in peace,_ but Eames couldn't bring himself to leave.

He sat on the bed beside Arthur and rested a hand on his shoulder while he was getting sick. Then, every time Arthur sat back up, Eames stroked his hair back from his forehead and moved closer until Arthur took the hint to lean against him.

"Fuck," Arthur groaned.

"Does it hurt?" Eames asked softly.

"Everywhere." Arthur lay back down on his stomach and clutched the pillow to his face. And Eames took a chance.

He smoothed his hands across Arthur's shoulders, then rubbed circles into the tense spot between Arthur's shoulderblades. Arthur's scalp was probably painfully tight, so Eames worked at it with gentle, even fingertips.

He could hear Georgi then, as clear as if he'd been in the room with them. You fucking idiot.

Georgi fancied himself a sort of expert on idiots. Paperclipped inside of each of his DVDs was a computer print-out list of the characters in the film ranked by intelligence. It was no impressionistic ordering, either. He had an algorithm for determining it, one he'd been working on since he was twenty-three. Eames had never had an algorithm for anything. This automatically granted him twenty Idiot Points.

No. Really. It did.

"I am an idiot," Eames said softly but definitely out loud.

"What?"

"Nothing," Eames said. "Go to sleep."

Arthur scooted his head closer to Eames’s thigh and bumped it, seeking the peculiar warmth of skin. Why do human bodies seek out other human bodies when they’re sick? Eames wondered. Pillows are softer.

"Oh Arthur. You're barking up the wrong tree, mate," Eames said bitterly under his breath. "Why can't you just understand that I'm not what's going to make you happy?"

And because the trajectory of the scene was heading there, and because he couldn't really salvage his clear-headedness anyway, he bent and pressed a soft kiss to Arthur's forehead. Something for the security cameras to remember me by, he thought.

*

After Arthur's vomiting phase came his sleep phase. Eames brought him clean water and set a bowl of applesauce and a plate of dry toast by his bed, then sat down in a chair by the window hoping to doze off for a moment or two. It didn't work. Exhausted as he was from tending to Arthur, he couldn't ignore the schedule his body had become accustomed to, and it was only 4 pm. 

He left Doc Holliday, curled up in a cat-croissant shape at Arthur's side, to tend to her master, and he plopped down on the living room couch and turned on the TV. 

There was really nothing on. It was too early for any of the decent sitcoms or crime procedurals, too late for any of the tawdry talk shows. Arthur didn't bother getting the deluxe cable package, since he claimed he rarely watched TV anyway. 

Eames lingered on a channel where an big excitable man with a blond toupee was hawking some sort of bizarre Russian nesting doll made of poultry, a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey or something like that. The man kept obsessively cutting a single piece of the Du-Chick-Key, or whatever the hell it was called, into smaller and smaller bits, then pressing down on it with the flat side of his knife until the juices drooled out onto the table while he said things like "Mmm, my God, you just do not get any juicier than this, do you, Megan." Megan, of course, nodded fervently. Of course it couldn't get any juicier.

Eames's higher faculties found the whole Du-Chick-Key business rather revolting, but his stomach begged to differ. He heated up some leftover chicken tikka masala in the microwave--right in the takeout box, despite the disapproving looks that Arthur always gave him when he reheated plastic. Precious freedom, he thought. 

It would of course be ridiculous if the most exciting thing he did with his freedom was to microwave plastic. He made his way over to the wet bar. Another Limbert piece; a little scratched, but it would still fetch a pretty penny at auction. He imagined Arthur at an auction, sitting like Slightly Older Lord Fauntleroy in one of those bespoke suits that fit him like an ice cube tray fits an ice cube, legs crossed in his seat, as single-minded as a torpedo as he called out numbers--fifty hundred, fifty-five hundred, sixty hundred--in a voice soft yet firm, unwavering yet devoid of desperation. 

Eames mixed himself one of Arthur's favorite cocktails. A Bedford: 2 ounces of rye whiskey, 2/3 oz Red Dubonnet, 1 tablespoon of Cointreau and 2 dashes of orange bitters orange peel garnish. He reclined on the couch with one leg propped on the other and one arm slung over the back of the couch. _Mmmm, I'm Arthur,_ he thought. _I'm an eccentric old man in a twenty-six-year-old's body. I have all sorts of old man hobbies. I smell like bay rum and listen to Count Basie on a victrola._

Eames put Count Basie on the victrola and continued being Arthur until he remembered that if he were actually Arthur he'd be lying in bed with a renegade stomach, which reminded him to go check on the real Arthur.

The real Arthur was still dead to the world, face pressed into the pillow. Eames gave his hair a ruffle, made sure his water supply was satisfactory, and adjusted the sheets around his shoulders. Then he went back into the living room and made himself another drink, and another. 

Swing-dancing with himself still left him feeling restless, so he turned the stereo off and loped off down the hall still humming. He hadn't been down this hallway much. At the end of it was the room Arthur frequently locked himself inside. It was never expressly stated, but since it was always locked (he'd tested the door once before) and Eames had no duties in there, he knew it was off-limits.

Eames decided to try his luck with the door. And to his infinite surprise, it opened.

If it was rigged to an alarm, it was a silent one. And Eames figured he could always explain his trespassing away as simple bored curiosity; it might earn him a swat on the bottom, but that was a small price to pay. If it was a price at all.

The room looked mostly as Eames expected it might. Some paintings on the walls; a bookshelf stacked high with volumes old and new, from shabby crumbling paperbacks with duct-taped spines to leatherbound codices that probably cost hundreds of dollars. A lovely polished burlwood desk. 

And sitting open on the burlwood desk was the silver briefcase Magnusson wanted.

Arthur must've been doing something with it when he got sick, Eames thought. Otherwise he wouldn't have left it out. 

The device had a lock on it, but it wasn't locked. It flipped open easily. 

The insides looked something like a centrifuge, or the inside of a camera, but he doubted it was either of those things. Then he remembered Arthur's reading materials. 

Whatever this machine is, Eames thought, it most likely does something to fuck with your brain.

There was a tube attached to one of the cylinders and a bag of sterile needles.

_If he catches me at this, I’m fucking done._

_But if Magnusson wants it, it has to be rather grand. And Arthur uses it himself; can’t be a torture device, can it?_

_At any rate I ought to get my trouble’s worth out of this little situation, eh?_

He thought at first that the instructions--if there were any--would be in one of the locked cabinets. But then he wondered if someone like Arthur would keep his classified documents in such an obvious place. 

Eames looked around the room. The documents probably weren't attached to anything expensive-looking, in case that thing got stolen, which left out the desk, the chair, the side tables and the paintings. Only the books remained. And of the books, Arthur probably wouldn't keep it in any of the first editions, for the same reasons. So that left the shabby hardbacks and paperbacks.

Twenty-four paperbacks into his search, Eames found an old hardback copy of John Fowles's _The Magus_ with a deep hole cut into the pages and a small book inserted.

*

Eames wondered when he’d scratched his cornea to shit, because everything looked all twinkly. He didn't remember a sandstorm blowing up in his face. It might've been that he was fresh off a chase, what with the way adrenaline always recorded over his memories, leaving him with nothing but brain fuzz, brain crackling, and a vague sensation of giddy dread. 

He blinked, and that made things a little better, but not much. Whatever else he was, he was definitely hung over. Or maybe he was still drunk. The sun looked to be about as high as a three-year-old's head, which meant it was no later than nine o'clock. But his sense of time was distorted. The sun was climbing fast. He was walking at his usual pace, maybe a bit slower thanks to the throbbing in his head, but he felt like he was bleeding time uncontrollably, like it would be five in the afternoon by the time he got to the market to get Arthur his shade-grown coffee and currant jam. And what was worse, he felt like it was all his fault.

The old man with the black dog passed him and he waved sheepishly. _Does he notice this?_ Eames wondered. _Is time doing speed trials for everyone, or is it still nine o'clock for him? Fuck time, and fuck me for drinking all of that last night, and--_

When he saw the Audi pull up next to him, he wasn't alarmed, just slightly peeved. _Let all the awful things happen to me today, why not,_ he thought.

"Eames." The power window buzzed and Georgi's sun-reddened face appeared. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back, untouched by the stiff wind. Eames looked over and noticed that Tomas was in the driver's seat. Tomas gave him a cursory nod and went back to mostly ignoring him like always. 

Eames put one hand on his hip. "Fancy seeing you in the neighborhood, Georgi. Jealous of my access to American basic cable? Looking for a vacation home in close proximity to a colony of artisan beadmakers?"

"Magnusson decided you were too much of an unknown quantity," Georgi said with a grin. "He wanted to entrust the goods to someone he'd worked with more directly. So we've come to get the goods, and you, and put everything back where it belongs."

"It's only the sixteenth," Eames protested. 

"Deadlines are deadlines." Georgi shrugged, lighting a cigarette. Eames focused on Tomas's hands, beating out a rhythm on the dashboard though no music was playing. Tomas wore a smugger look than usual, Eames noticed. Like he was just waiting for some inferior intellect to realize it had just been duped.

And as soon as Eames glanced over the headrests, he knew why. 

There was a man slumped against the tinted window with a gag in his mouth. His eyes were closed; he was obviously drugged. If he wasn't dead already. 

"He's a good resource for us," Georgi said in response to the look of shock and fear on Eames's face. "Why do you care what happens to him? You've manipulated hundreds of people into giving us what we wanted. You can't tell me you didn't know something like this might happen when you began to work for him--or, should I say, when he began to work for you."

"Fine." Eames sighed and slid into the back seat of the car. 

The Audi picked up speed and turned onto the winding mountain highway. Tomas turned up the volume on the radio and began pounding the steering wheel to the rhythm of "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel. 

Whenever Tomas's eyes in the rearview mirror were averted, Eames glanced nervously over at Arthur. Arthur's head kept knocking against the glass with dull thuds, and of all the indignities, it made Eames angry that Arthur couldn't hold his head up to stop it from smacking against the glass. Eames stretched his foot over and nudged Arthur's leg. Arthur grunted but didn't otherwise respond. 

_I'm gonna get you out of this,_ he thought. _We can go our separate ways, and you can go back to being a serial killer or whatever it is you do._

Eames looked over at the car door. If he could grab Arthur, maybe they could both roll out of the car together. The car was moving fast, but it was worth a shot. His other options were waiting until they stopped the car to piss. Or finding some reason to make them stop the car.

"Georgi," Eames said, threading a note of alarm through his voice. "I don't think he's breathing." 

Georgi laughed. "Nice try, Eames. He's drugged. Of course he isn't going to look like he's breathing." 

But Eames could see the look of worry in Tomas's eyes. "Georgi, do you think we should check? Magnusson's orders were very clear--"

"Goddamnit, Tomas, you're about to move five spots down on the Idiot List if you keep talking," Georgi grunted.

Eames rested his chin on his hand and looked out the window. He could try and take control of the wheel, but he was outnumbered, and he might just end up getting them all killed. Neither Georgi's gun nor Tomas's was visible from where he sat. He kicked around for anything he might be able to use as a weapon. Just as his foot hit something metallic, there was the sound of a projectile pinging off the bumper. Then the back of the car drooped and he felt the sensation of metal grinding against asphalt run through his body. Georgi and Tomas started cursing, and Georgi pulled the Uzi out of the glove compartment, leaned out of the car and fired a steady tattoo at the pursuing vehicle. 

"Fucking drive faster, you idiot!" he screamed at Tomas. "And turn the goddamn radio off!" 

Inexplicably, Peter Gabriel was still singing about eagles flying out of the night.

The car following them was dark blue, a Volvo like Arthur's, but Eames couldn't get a good look at who was driving it. He decided it didn't entirely matter; they were an opportunity and nothing more. He leaned over, flicked open the lock and gave the handle a push. 

Fucking child safety locks. 

In the absence of something long to push down into the lock and get it open, he sat back down and waited and thought as the sounds of splintering glass and crunching metal bloomed in his ears.

Georgi fired off another couple hundred rounds. "I got the bitch!" Georgi crowed. "The windshield and both tires." 

Tomas looked in the rear view. "Then why is the bitch still coming after us at ninety miles per hour?" he shouted. "Who the fuck is it anyway?"

"Does your Arthur have a girlfriend?" Georgi said. 

Eames wouldn't dignify that with a response.

"Good thing you're a nancy boy, Eames. Leaves more for us. And there seems to be an awful lot of this one. She's feisty." 

Eames was fortunate that he had been ducking to check Arthur's pulse when that bullet came hurtling through the back windshield with the intent to prove Georgi's final words all too true. She was feisty. 

She was bits of blood and bone feisty, bits of Georgi's hair and skull and grey matter all over the windshield feisty. Half of Tomas's face was lumpy and bloody and strewn with bits of pulp, and he looked like a maskless Phantom of the Opera even though it was temporary. Just some special effects makeup courtesy of Georgi's splattered brains. 

Tomas genuflected and punched the accelerator. But with two shot-out tires the car was starting to drag more and more. It was veering all over the road, allowing her to easily shoot out a third tire. The car spun in a circle, and the only thing that saved it from flying over the flimsy guardrail and onto treetops miles below was the other car that pinned it swiftly into the side of the mountain.

* 

"You have sour cream on your nose." 

Eames looked up. He wasn't sure where he'd be, but he certainly didn't expect to be in the Cafe Kukushka in St. Petersburg. A vague feeling of wrongness hung about him, or maybe it was just one of the clouds of cigarette smoke, thick and whipped as mashed potatoes, that shrouded every table, including his. There were two cigarettes in the ash tray. He didn't remember lighting one. But he picked one up and wasn't scolded. 

Smoke moved differently. Differently from where, he couldn't say. But there was something off about the way it seemed to have a will of its own: nubby little arms and legs jutted out like the pseudopods of amoebae, and it snaked back and forth, a slow belly dance. He was so transfixed by it that he almost forgot about the woman sitting across the table from him. Come to think of it, not all the smoke was even attached to cigarettes. It simply was. Each table was an excuse for smoke. 

He peered through it and could make out large eyes, dark hair, a round face. The woman from his death scene. 

He wiped his nose and sat up straighter, as if that would make up for the previous embarrassment. "So--well, thank you for saving me from those men," he said.

"It's more or less my job," she said tartly. "Now before I answer any of your thousand questions, will you tell me why in the name of fuck you came into a dream drunk?"

"I'm--" He didn't remember having any alcohol. But then, he didn't remember a lot of things. "I suppose I am drunk." 

An accordion began to play in the corner, and a man with a raspy voice started crooning a sad song, something about a cat crying in the night.

"I'm so glad you think this is funny," the woman snapped. 

Only then did Eames realize he was laughing. 

"Somnacin is a sedative. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to mix sedatives with alcohol?" She shook her head. "This is not a toy." 

"I don't even know what you're talking about," he begged. "I have no idea how I got here. I'm just...I suppose I'm just enjoying it." 

That was true. Something inside him said that he ought to be more curious, more afraid, but it was overridden by the desire not to go back to wherever it was he'd come from. He felt safe here. 

"You feel safe here," she said bluntly.

"Wha--you can read my mind?" A spoon he hadn't realized he was holding clattered into a bowl of borscht he hadn't realized was sitting in front of him.

"No," she said. "I'm in your mind. And so are you."

He chuckled. "I should hope I'm in my mind. Otherwise--"

"No. This is--I will give you to the count of ten to stop laughing, Mr. Eames." 

"You know my name?" And there was the curiosity.

"It is literally written all over your face," she said. "Or, more precisely, your neck." 

She pointed, and he looked down at the open collar of his shirt. There was his name, first and last, written--or was it tattooed?--on his collarbone.

He rubbed frantically at it, trying to get it off. But the black ink was just as dark as ever. He looked at her with pleading eyes.

"Too bad, Lady Macbeth." She turned away from him and crossed her legs. "You can't get away from yourself that easily."

Now the thought of the name on his neck was making his flesh crawl. It felt as though tattoo needles were perpetually going into his skin, going over and over the lines and arcs of those letters (Helvetica, no less) and he watched her implacable gaze as he winced and squirmed. Finally he couldn't take it anymore. Without giving a thought to consequence, he reached beneath the skin itself until his fingernails had dug a flap, and he peeled and peeled. There was a sickening ripping sound. 

And then he held a piece of skin, tattooed with his own name, in his hands.

"Impressive," the woman deadpanned.

"Never seen anyone tear off his own skin before?" Eames said.

"I've rarely seen anyone do it without leaving a gaping hole in their chest," she answered.

And when he looked down he saw it was true. There was nothing there but unblemished skin that blended seamlessly with the skin around it. 

Mal was suddenly quiet. 

"What is it?" he asked. 

As he waited for her reply, he mysteriously found two rubles in his hand with which to tip the accordionist walking by.

"I should probably not encourage you to pursue any future dreamshare activities," she said, rather ruefully, "but you seem to have certain--traits--that predispose one to success in this field. That might only be the alcohol, though. You would need to try again."

"What traits are those?"

"A body that can change its properties," she said. She drank from a glass of wine that had just materialized. "And no fear of pain."

"What sort of person doesn't feel pain?" he asked incredulously. 

But she ignored his question. "Tell me, Mr. Eames, what do you fear?" 

He shook his head. "Why should I tell you that?"

Her expression turned stern. "Because you cannot dream without admitting your worst fear. Otherwise it will overcome you completely, in the most insidious and unstoppable of ways." 

"And why do you assume that I'd want to do this again?" 

She smiled wryly. "I've seen so many bodies in dreamspaces. You are practically melting into the scenery. You look like a person who is happy for the first time." 

Eames wondered what about this scenario would be making him unusually happy. He was in the Kukushka Cafe, where he'd played cards and negotiated over the sale of a stolen shipment of counterfeit Ferraris. Business as usual. He was hoping the deal would get him promoted, but of course--speaking of business as usual--it never did. And Eames watched the old mobsters dancing with their mistresses, and the vodka with anise he slammed down his throat had a chaser of bitterness. He was tired of working for other people. No matter what he felt he owed to Georgi, for trusting him with business, for taking in a fatherless 19-year-old army runaway and showing him the world and teaching him how to do something useful, the fact remained, he was sick of it. 

And he didn't want his own men either. He didn't want power. He wanted to be left alone.

"He's jealous of you," she said.

"Who?" Eames looked around. 

And there, behind him, was Georgi, sitting alone with his hand over the top of a glass like it was a mouth he was trying to shut. He glared at Eames, but he didn't speak. Or shoot. 

"He thinks you're smarter than he is. That's why he makes you feel like a fool. That's why he pretends he doesn't trust you." 

Eames threw his head back in frustration. "Really wish he'd go away."

"Then make him go away," she said calmly. 

He reached into his pocket. "No, not like that. Just imagine he isn't here." 

"...Alright then, Peter Pan." he said, confused. 

"Imagine a fold in space. Imagine him being sucked into it. Think of a popping sound if you have to." Now she sounded as if she was leading a meditation session. But he couldn't ignore the authoritative drone of her voice, and he obeyed. 

He pictured Georgi disappearing, but nothing happened. Over and over again. He was beginning to feel foolish. 

"Imagine that space is a shell," said a deep male voice behind him. It startled him, and he turned around to see Arthur emerge from out of nowhere.

The woman smiled. "Imagine it has a deep pocket."

"A pocket that can pull anything in and cover it with the empty sound of the ocean." 

"This is bloody weird," Eames muttered.

"Mal," Arthur said, smiling. "You always find new ways to surprise me."

He took a seat at the table and picked up a cigarette, which flared up as soon as he touched it to his lips. Mal glared at him.

"Kill me later. Now you have to tell me how you learned to split yourself in two." 

"Split my--" Mal fell silent as soon as she glanced up at Eames. "Did you plan to do that?"

"Do what?" 

Eames looked down at his hands. Smooth, long-fingered, with dark red nails. He looked at Mal's hands. Smooth, long-fingered, with dark red nails. 

Arthur smiled matter-of-factly at each of them. "Looks like we've found ourselves a forger."

"But can he control it, is the question." She still didn't sound impressed. Eames was beginning to see a pattern.

"Who knows." Arthur scooted his chair over to be closer to Mal, and either Eames's eyes deceived him or she slipped an arm around his waist.

"You two are--"

"Yes, I suppose so," she said, looking rather sheepish.

"Did you program it this way?" Their faces turned grim, and Eames immediately regretted asking. "Sorry, sorry."

"Not everything can be controlled," Mal said darkly. 

Arthur leaned over to kiss her cheek. Eames felt something he didn't quite recognize well up inside him, and he chalked it up to the usual feeling of being left out of the loop. It was a dangerous feeling for him. It made him want to say nasty things.

"So what do you two lovebirds do when this thing gets shut off then?" he asked, taking another swig of his vodka. "Curl up and watch telly and plan your babymaking?" 

Arthur's expression went from dark to downright murderous. 

"It's time for you to go, Mr. Eames," he said. 

That was the last thing Eames heard, aside from the bang.


End file.
